Slashdot Mirror
Australian ISPs Required To Report Child Porn
rolling_or_jaded writes "As of the 1st of March 2005, Australian ISPs and web hosts will face fines of up to $55,000 if they can be used to access child pornography and do not refer the information to the police. Yikes. How on earth are the ISPs (and web hosts -- like my own very small-time and humble company) supposed to enforce this?"
These sorts of hysterias happen every now and then. People get all up in arms about drugs, child abductions, terrorism, alcohol, $BLAH... and all of a sudden the rules need to be changed to protect us all from the menace that threatens to corrupt our children and anally rape them with a crack pipe.
Civil liberties mean nothing when you can get a good hysteria going.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I'm sure the government is now trying to work out how to get the voice telcos to report that their voice networks can be used to arrange child abductions by groups of pedophiles too.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
nope - just set up an email address 'reportchildport@myisp.net' that forwards to 'postmaster@police.gov' and put it on your front page
Stop the world, I want to get off as there is no sign of intelligent life here.
As an asside, they are planning to ban parents from taking photos during school swimming carnivals soon here in Australia for fear of pedophiles taking photographs.
People are trying to look like they are doing something even though their proposed "solutions" make no sense.
"What that equates to is if child porn is reported to the ISP/webhost, they have to then report it to the Australian police quickly or face penalties."
Correct. Just as has been the case for several years in the USA.
When this happened to me -- somebody let me know that a member of my site was using their storage to host child porn, I very quickly called the FBI, who in turn sent me to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
For me, there was no gray area. I didn't think for one minute of my rights being violated. I didn't think for one minute about losing my Slashdot cred (which, by definition, I must not have in the first place) by doing so. In short, the phrase "your rights online" did not even occur to me; if any phrase came to mind, it was "you shore got a purdy mouth" or some similar one that I envisioned the scumbag hearing sometime soon.
In short, I think that if an ISP operator is upset by a law that requires them to report child pornography to the authorities once they're made aware of it, then perhaps they shouldn't be running an ISP.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Laws such as these also have a flip side, implied or specifically stated. As long as an ISP has reasonable grounds for making a report, the law gives protection from harrassing lawsuits by the pervert who is being reported.
Quite a few Slashdot readers need to grow up and quit whining "how on earth" every time society demands that they demonstrate some responsibility for others--in this case horribly abused children.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
"Seiously How are they even going to try to enforce this? Unless They have an army of trained web-content filtering monkeys, it's going to be next to impossible."
I'll break it down for you:
If anybody can't be bothered to investigate a report of suspected kiddie porn on their own server, then they should not be running an ISP.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Okay, let me be the devil's advocate here. I think this is ridiculous. I'm not a pedophile by any means, but this is nothing but clear-cut censorship. A lot of people think piracy is bad, so is it okay for ISPs to restrict full access to it? A lot of people think porn is bad... Restrict? A lot of people think controversial news stories are bad. Restrict? I don't think so. Lack of child porn isn't going to make pedophiles go away. In fact, without an outlet, there's a chance that they'll turn to the real thing. There are LOTS of closet pedophiles around, and I'm sure that if they lost this outlet they would decide to come out of the closet and do something horrible. We all know a 5 year old girl won't file rape charges.
My hat is off to you and I probably would have done exactly the same thing in your situation. Where you lost your Slashdot cred is when you suggested that the basic right to privacy is equivalent to paedophilia. You got it back by failing to RTFA.
I did, however, so I will point out that the article did not say "is being used". It said "can be used".
That's because these sites are much less prevalent than child porno sites.
Le français vous intéresse?
This just shows how "elitist" some of the commenters are; they all pretty much seem to be saying that, the police or the government don't know what they're legislating.
Of course, some of the regulations can not be fully enforced, but that does not mean they shouldn't be legislated.
I have worked for one of the top 3 ISPs in Australia, and they do work quite closely with the police. This is mainly in the tracking side of things: threatening emails, spam, etc.
By the way, you seem to have misunderstood the fines part of the article. The fines are not for using an ISP to access CP, but it is for not disclosing who is accessing CP when they find out. It is essentially an extension of the existing child abuse legislation: if you suspect abuse, you have to report it!
"Hello, police? As required, I am reporting that my service can be used to access child porn. Goodbye."
Virgin seem to have already forgotten that it is still only two and a half years since they moved out of the hastily developed "domestic express" terminal into the south section of the main terminal left vacant in the interim after the collapse of Ansett.
There are older ways to get people on planes and still with sufficient security.
But when somebody flies the security scare, just like the kiddy porn scare, it seems like signs of intelligent life disappear in more than just Australia.
Now if only we could penalise the mass media for propagating deliberate political lies with the same vigour as we want to use to force ISPs to censor their clients.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Heh, I still have an old file cabinet from that company that is labeled "The PedoFile."
I wouldn't keep that stuff around. True or not you get labelled a pedophile and your life is over.
We had to deal with law enforcement on a regular basis. The 'PedoFile' was where we kept whatever records we needed to to keep track of these dealings. The label that I speak of is simply a piece of masking tape with the word PedoFile written on it. All the contents are long gone. Doesn't matter anyway, when you work in the porn biz, you see so many things that you can never unsee. Think goatse. You'll never forget that.
Because you have a huge bandwidth draw on CP, that to me tells me how popular and lustfull it is to people. It makes me wonder just how many people are turned on to CP but would never admit to it unless there was an anonymous poll taken.
It's just sick to even think of what might be a reality check for all of humanity
Life is not for the lazy.
A perfect example of terrorism/kiddyporn hysteria. You were discussing subject X and and you ran away in your imagination about something else.
This crime is by nature a habitual one
The "crime" you were actually replying to was someone convicted of possession prohibited information.
From the context of your comment you clearly had mentally changed "this crime" to mean the actual crime of child abuse. A mental substitution for one subject for another. This is an emotional subject and that happens a lot. But when you subconsiously substitute one thing for another it leads to flawed conclusions. It is particularly bad when you are discussion pulling out a gun and forcibly imprisoning people. If you are going to say someone committed a criminal act you need to be CRYSTAL CLEAR on exactly what criminal act you imprisoning him for.
I certainly agree with you that child abuse laws need to be viorously enforced. However I for one have a problem with the concept of "possesion of prohibited information" being a criminal act. Someone who commits an actual crime like child abuse - or crime against blacks and jews and gays - should certainly be in prison. However I have a problem with the notion that possession of neo-nazi-literature could itself be a crime. A crime to possess certain information. Doesn't that concept bother you?
I happen to like redheads. Call me a "red-ophile" chuckle. I have at times downloaded images from usenet by the tens-of-thousands and later sorting through for the rare redheads and deleting the rest. When you download tens of thousands of random images from usenet some of them will inevitably be underage porn. Hell, those under age images might even have been posted to usenet from a country where porn involving 16-year-olds is perfectly legal. Now here is where I am a bit puzzled... someone downloads ten thousand images and saves one group of a hundred deletes the rest and it's perfectly legal. Someone else downloads the exact same ten thousand images and saves a different set of one hundred deleting the rest, and somehow he has commited a criminal act? The only distinction was the choice of which files to delete. I kinda thought the commission of a crime had to involve an actual criminal act against someone.
There are a lot of things I don't like. There's a lot of information I wouldn't mind seeing wiped from the face of the earth. However I think the notion that possession of information can somehow be a criminal act is a very bad and very dangerous idea. You do not bend and break the fundamental basis of law just to target something you do not like, no matter how much you hate it. I'll say it again, nail people who commit criminal acts of child abuse. Do not distort the fundamental meaning of "criminal act" to go on some holy crusade.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
In Australia, a child abuse image has to depict a child under the age of 16, or who appears to be under the age of 16. (I work in Computer Forensics for a state police force, so this stuff is bread and butter for us.)
My point on security was that post-9-11 preoccupations have locked in "must follow procedures" even more strongly, no matter at what the cost. I'm as much concerned by the seeming lack of public reaction to the inflexibility as I am by the inflexibility itself.
Somewhere deep down there is/was an Australian tradition of coping, of finding a way, so it's even sadder here that the nanny state is now in such ascendancy.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
# Somebody notifies you of one of your subscribers posting kiddie porn on a web page you host.
# You spend one minute out of your busy day viewing the web page and you suspect that it may indeed be kiddie porn.
# Person walks by and happens to catch you looking at kiddie porn.
# So he/she tell the authorities.
# You never read Slashdot again.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
Alas, it seems to be yet another act of entirely pointless legislation (sadly all to common all over the world) and a waste of tax payers money and parliamentary time.
All the law says is that they are NOT allowed to turn a blind eye when someone complains about child porn hosted on or transmitted through their facilities. Then all they have to do is forward the complaint on to the police for action.
I would assume it is illegal for them not to report it to the police in Australia, although I don't know what the legal situation is there I'd wager they already legally bound to report all criminal activity (and I'm sure possession of child pornography falls into that category).
What is it with politicians and trying to push through redundant legislation for causes in the public eye?
Surely it's more efficent and appropriate to ensure we are enforcing the appropriate laws we do have - and if they are unenforceable, amend them appropriately rather than create an unfathomable myriad of narrow 'crime specific' laws (especially ones like this which will almost never be used, and merely serve to justify bureaucracy).
Also, the US proposed a law saying
Proposing a law isn't the same as MAKING a law. This proposed law was struck down almost instantly...there is currently no law stating that a grown woman can't dress as a teen...or vice-versa even.
In several cases, the molester (not always male!) was assaulted as a child. They've been fucked up in the head and now, to prove they are grown up, they do what grown ups did to them.
For these reasons and more, I will not demonise people accused of child abuse
Having it done to you as a child does not mean anything. ANYTHING. You grow up, you're making decisions now that YOU are going to abuse/rape a child...then that's totally on you. You cannot blame your past. For instance, my parents used to beat me with a belt...but I've never once hit or spanked my child and he's almost 12 now. Was I suppose to spank him and if I did I could just use "well, it happened to me as a child so it's ok for me to do it to my child". No...I have a brain...I can think for myself. I made a conscience decision to NOT do something.
So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse. They are making a decision, they are doing it. They could have broken the cycle...but no, they have to blame it on what happened to them, and it seems with enablers like you, they have an easy out. We are NOT locked into a behavior just because it happened to us as a child.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
"So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse."
I hope that you will at least wait until they are convicted.
It still sounds like a silly law.
It's essentially saying that the ISP must provide a crime-reporting service for the police. What if I report child porn to my local real estate agent? Why aren't THEY required to provide this service as well?
Crimes should be reported to the police, not ISPs. If an ISP is made aware of a crime, and they feel the report has merit, they should notify the police, but I don't see a reason to specifically call out one crime and require that all reports must be forwarded to the police.
Worst case scenario, this law is highly vulnerable to denial of service attacks (I pity the ISP that someone decides to taunt in this way, and NO THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION... PLEASE DON'T DO THAT).
Thus far at the age of 26 I have broken the cycle. Though I've gone through all kinds of anger, rage, depression, fear and everything you can imagine. Its not easy though: for me it is a life of constant solitude. I am unable to build or maintain a relationship with anyone. I have never dated, kissed, or had sex with anyone other than my abuser. I hope to be able to someday but right now its just to difficult. I'm trying to work on building normal friend relationships first. Above all I fear repeating the cycle. I would rather end my life than.
Your opinion doesn't count.
You may not want to demonize child abuse, but I do, as well as its apologists, which you certainly appear to be.
Arguing that child porn isn't evil or doesn't even exist because different legislatures have used different age categories when codifying its prohibition is inane and specious. Different locations have different speed limits, too. Would you argue, then, that speed limits do no exist and should not exist?
The ame applies to your attempt at historical analysis. The legal age for marriage has always varied, and still varied, from one society to the next. This is because the "legal age" for marriage is not, and should not be, synonymous with the age at which we come to sexual maturity.
Your argument boils down to the same kind of childish, petulant, arrogant and ultimately unconvincing argument so abundantly produced by the adolescents who post here.
If the Australian government wants its ISP's to block sites carrying illegal material, it ought to supply ISP's with a list of IP addresses to block. If the law doesn't provide for that, then it needs to be fixed. End of story.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I was going to sit here and make a post about the emotional trauma one goes through after being molested.
I was going to state that now as a man, it is hard not to think back to what happened. On how 14 year olds look cute and I have to resist looking for child porn sites.
I think its completly disgusting.
However, sir, you are a complete moron who tries to state facts of a subject you are completly ignorant of.
Sexual molestation haunts you the rest of your life and can seriously affect sex drive.
It takes me a while to reach a climax with my girlfriend. It takes me a while to reach climax with masterbation. Sometimes I even can't. I easily get aroused at women pertained as children and wish I could date a hot, young looking 18 year old. (but I have a girlfriend who I want to stay serious with)
I'm 21, male, and was molested by two different people from 2-12 years old.
Don't you dare tell me that we are NOT locked into a behavior because of what happened to us as children. It is very, very difficult to overcome your sexual erges.
That doesn't mean, of course, that you should ignore child abusers, nor that they get free passes, nor that they get away scott free.
Who said that, because you deleted them right away, it was not criminal for you to download them?
I have also unintentionally downloaded many of those mixed in with large batches of legal images. I always use one of those "file wipers" for the paranoid to overwrite them before deleting them. I also no longer batch download when I'm not available to review the download right away. The problem is that posession of that data is illegal, and we both "posessed" the data before we even knew what it was.
So we were both in the position where we were technically felons, and at the discretion of the police / magistrate to decide intent. This is not a position I want to be in, especially given the paranoia of the general populace when with regard to pedophiles.
Just like the drug laws, I can understand laws against the manufacture and trafficking. But posession laws are a little too broad and can be used to make an instant felon out of anyone.
Your right, couldnt think of the case.. thanks.
Good, a much more reasonable stance, but we only have the words on paper to go by. Yes I agree being responsible for your actions is very important and a good standard to go by.
I have an issue with the certaintly of the community standards about what is good vs. what is bad behaviour.
Not to dismiss your own decisions on parenting, but the "studies" done on what is good or acceptable parenting practice may be flawed and have very long term negative effects. China will be a good example of sort of unilateral change in parenting with their policy to have only one child (very successful). There are now a large crop of families with and only child. The family structure in China is now broken. These children are very spoiled in the way only children naturally are because they don't have to contend with siblings for resources or attention or love. Their children will have parents but almost no Aunts and Uncles. Think about it, The large extended family is the cornerstone of Chinese culture, now broken forever on a massive scale. Watch out for the new China that will emerge.
The point being an overal law or policy or accepted behavior can have a dramatic effect for a long time.
It the case of this thread, changing the "responsibility" of an ISP to be responsible legally for their hosted content dramatially changes the business model in a way that makes it unfeasible for many of those businesses to operate, or if they do the prices will climb dramatically, which will effect all of us as a hidden cultural tax. And I fear the beginnings of the "Witch Hunt" days coming back. With the president that wanted the "Tips" program for citizens to have an easier way to inform on other fellow citizens, and scare tactics used by the Justice department to try and remove sexually explicit materials from stores. I am afraid that the up-tight ultra conservative agenda is trying to infect the country with its unhealthy constrictive outlook on life liberty and the persuit of happiness by us citizens.
Please get a grip on yourself. You've got way too much anger and not anywhere near enough sense. If you think you're acting rationally, consider a few cases and tell me what that'd get you.
Firstly, this discussion pertains to notifications of the possibility of child porn. If I called your ISP and told them you were hosting CP, and you lived in Australia, they'd have to pass that information on to the police. Whether you actually did it is a matter for the police to decide, so toss yourself on the fire if you feel that an accusation (which is what the article is about, by the way) is enough.
Next, take note that if you choose to execute such punishment only on convicted offenders, that there are a number of cases where folks have been convicted (and in one case, sentenced to death) for sexually abusing a child, only to have later evidence exonerate them. If you performed such hellacious torture on someone who turns out to have been innocent, you can't simply let them out of their grave, eh?
Lastly, if you only choose to torture those who are unquestionably guilty, then there's a fifteen year old girl who was convicted of posession and distribution of child porn for taking videos of herself masturbating and giving them to a classmate. There's no question of her guilt, and she's now a registered sex offender, so you'll have to consider lighting her up until she begs you to let her die.
Lastly, you're kidding yourself if you think that fear of getting caught will reduce the number of child sex abuse cases. Sexual urges tend to override virtually everything else, including fear of retribution.
In short, shut up. You sound like a pissed-off ten year old. It's obvious that you view the world through a haze of red, and frankly I'd consider you more dangerous than most because you have actually attached your morality to this badly damaged view of justice, so you'd likely be uncorrectable. I feel for your "precious angel", who may never learn to handle anger properly with you around.
Virg